One year and two days after Jeff Wagner became the mayor of Pasadena, the City Council rejected his proposal to spend almost $500,000 on improvements to the municipal golf course. The mayor — at least publicly — was gracious in defeat.

“As you can see, I’m not upset,” Wagner said after the council meeting, adding that he appreciated the “spirited debate” that preceded the 5-3 vote. Of those opposed to his plan, he offered: “I value what they say.”

Wagner’s equanimity stood in sharp contrast to the style of his predecessor, Johnny Isbell, a leader so strong-willed that he twice instructed police officers to remove council members from the chamber when they exceeded their speaking time. And although Wagner often voted with a pro-Isbell bloc during his one term on the council, he started distancing himself from Isbell even before he was sworn in as mayor of Harris County’s second-largest city on July 1, 2017.

A year into his four-year term, Wagner says he is focused on unifying a city whose ethnic and socioeconomic inequities were displayed before a national audience during the 2016 trial over a redistricting lawsuit. Current and former city officials say Wagner’s more conciliatory style serves him well in achieving this goal, but they differ on how much progress he’s made.

Pasadena, like Houston, has a strong-mayor system of government. Isbell, who led the city off-and-on from 1981 to 2017, came to symbolize its reputation for intolerance and inequity as witnesses in the redistricting trial testified that the city had systematically neglected the needs of its mostly Latino northside neighborhoods.

In January 2017, Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal found that a revised council district system, initiated by Isbell, intentionally diluted the influence of Latino voters. The city, under Isbell, promptly appealed.

Last September, in what was arguably the most consequential decision of his first year in office, Wagner dropped the appeal. The city agreed to continue electing all eight council members from districts, and to pay a $1 million settlement to the Latino plaintiffs.

Isbell, who left office because of term limits, criticized Wagner’s decision, saying he believed the city would have prevailed on appeal. In an interview last week, however, Wagner said ending the case was an essential step in bringing the city together.

“I didn’t feel that we (the city) had done anything wrong,” said Wagner, 54, a retired Houston police officer. “But I felt we had to get out of it as quickly as we did.”

Not a single Pasadena resident has mentioned the case to him since the city dropped it, Wagner said, a clear sign that his constituents are more concerned about nuts-and-bolts issues like streets and drainage.

“That’s why it was the right decision for this administration,” he said.

Wagner and his aides point to achievements in cleaning up neighborhoods, promoting new development and effectively managing the city’s response to Hurricane Harvey, which dumped record-breaking rains across the Houston area less than two months into Wagner’s term.

Harvey flooded about 5,800 homes in Pasadena, Wagner said — more than 10 percent of the total housing units in the city of about 150,000 people. Within less than three weeks after Harvey, he said, debris-removal crews had made three complete rounds of the city.

“We were very aggressive to get everybody’s stuff out and away from their houses, because that way they could focus on rebuilding, not what they lost,” Wagner said.

The mayor said his policies are encouraging new development in Pasadena, which has grown at a modest pace of 2.8 percent since 2010. Land is being cleared for a new residential development near the city’s convention center that will eventually include 425 homes, according to the mayor’s office.

Former Councilwoman Pat Van Houte, who continues to keep a close eye on city affairs, offered a mixed assessment of Wagner’s first year leading the city.

“This mayor started with certain promises and he has fulfilled some,” she said, among those dropping the redistricting lawsuit. “He has shown some leadership skills.”

Van Houte said she had been disappointed, however, with some of the administration’s priorities, including the golf course improvements rejected by the council last week.

“The city has been spending quite a bit of money on buildings, and not much in neighborhoods getting the streets and sidewalks done,” she said.

Cody Ray Wheeler, one of three Latinos now on the City Council, was one of Isbell’s harshest critics. On the day of Wagner’s inauguration, Wheeler expressed optimism that Wagner would be more attentive to the needs of northside residents.

It hasn’t worked out that way, Wheeler said last week.

“I went in optimistic, but it feels after a year that it’s the same old thing with a new, smiling face in front of it,” Wheeler said.

As an example of continued inequities, Wheeler offered data about the city’s neighborhood network program, which provides grants to community organizations for neighborhood improvements. During the trial of the redistricting case, witnesses testified that Isbell’s administration had used the program as a political tool, steering grants to groups that were then encouraged to help get out votes for initiatives the mayor favored.

Wheeler did not allege that the practice has continued under Wagner. He said, however, that wealthy, mostly Anglo neighborhoods south of Spencer Highway had received more than $65,000 in grants, while areas north of Spencer had received about $3,000.

“This is a huge disparity in the way the city is handing out grant funds,” Wheeler said during Tuesday’s council meeting.

Wagner said he had expanded the neighborhood network program, and suggested many northside neighborhoods don’t have homeowners associations or other organizations that could receive the grants.

Wheeler and Van Houte also expressed disappointment that Wagner had not followed through on his plan, announced during his second month in office, to restore bus service to Pasadena — a service that would benefit many poor or working-class residents.

Pasadena opted out of receiving service from the Metropolitan Transit Authority, but bus service was provided from 2010-2012 by Harris County Transit, a division of the county’s community service department.

The city dropped the service after Isbell’s administration concluded the ridership didn’t justify the cost. A few months after announcing his intention to restore the service, Wagner said he was reconsidering because of concerns about potential cost escalations after the first year of the three-year agreement with Harris County Transit.

Leaders of the transit agency, however, said the city never relayed these concerns or otherwise responded to the proposed contract.

Wagner said Pasadena has hired a consultant to review other public transportation options such as a privately operated service. No time frame has been established for the consultant to provide recommendations, he said.

“We’re for it, but can we afford it?” he asked. “We’re taking it very slowly, looking at this with caution. We want to make the right decision.”

Mike Snyder has been a Houston Chronicle journalist since January 1979, with alternating stints as a reporter and editor. His reporting assignments have included city government, transportation, housing and growth and development issues. Prior to joining the Chronicle he worked as a reporter for the Conroe Courier and the Galveston Daily News. He is a native of Corpus Christi and a graduate of the University of Houston.